How To Read Blogs On the Go…Without WiFi

Originally published on 30 January 2007 as “Monday Methodology: Capturing Web Reading”.

I use a blog aggregator (Bloglines) in conjunction with the tabbed browsing of Firefox to manage my on-line reading. I open up the Bloglines window in one tab, then shift-click on each article I wish to pursue further. Then I close Bloglines, and mark the open tabs in Del.icio.us, categorizing them as @Process, @Action, or @Read.

I noticed last week that my @Read category was getting large – around 50 articles. Since I expected to have some significant waiting time in the next few days, I looked around for a way to get those pages onto my PDA.

Enter Pluckr. This free PDA reader allows me to customize “channels”. This can allow users to monitor specific websites. But it also will allow me to enter my own HTML code.

To make this work, I brought up my @Read category in Del.icio.us, then did a View Source to get the HTML. I then copied the links into the Pluckr page, updated the channel, and on my next Hotsynch all my reading pages were on my PDA.

Update January 2008I don’t remember using this technique more than once or twice, and as I revisit this article, I thought, “That’s a great idea!” I’d love to be able to take my reading with me on an upcoming trip where I will be without access to the Internet.

I will say, though, that I no longer use Bloglines. I switched to Google Reader many moons ago.

Another way to accomplish this sort of thing would be to use the Offline version of Google Reader, which downloads your pages onto your computer for off-the-net browsing.